As a component-to-be-loaded that aims for electric contact with a main body apparatus, there is provided a battery pack that is loaded on a video camera.
Such a battery pack can be loaded on a video light, a battery charger and the like other than the video camera, and is in need of aiming for electric contact with these appliances all of which are each provided with a terminal of the same form.
Additionally, there are plural-types of batteries based on differences in capacity, and further, as a component-to-be-loaded having a terminal of the same form that is similar to the battery pack, there are, for example, a dry cell pack, a DC plate and the like. By the way, the DC plate is a component-to-be-loaded that has an outer form like the battery pack to be loaded on a battery loading portion and a cord for connecting to a battery charger and supplies DC electric power to a main body apparatus via the above-mentioned component-to-be-loaded.
Then, in order to aim for the electric contact between the main body side apparatus and the component-to-be-loaded, there are provided, for example, structures of terminals described in Japanese laid-open patent application No. 10-312782 by the same applicant as that of the present invention.
In explaining this simply, a tubular type-like sleeve terminal embedded in a battery case or a circular cylinder-like pin terminal that engages with the above-mentioned sleeve terminal is employed, respectively.
Then these sleeve terminal and pin terminal are molded by being inserted in a battery case or a molded portion of a battery loading portion.
Since such a terminal, specifically, a sleeve terminal of a battery side terminal is embedded in the battery case, the sleeve terminal is not exposed, and as a result, it is possible to prevent a trouble in which a key-holder, necklace, chain or the like is brought into contact between sleeve terminals to cause a short circuit.
Such a battery pack is loaded on a main body side apparatus by way of convex and concave engaging portions formed in a battery case and a battery loading portion of the main body side apparatus. Therefore, positioning the two are roughly performed by these convex and concave engaging portions, though positioning of the terminals are performed by increasing positional accuracy and dimensional accuracy of both the terminals themselves, and engagement of these terminals.
Then, to load a battery pack is performed by sliding the above-mentioned sleeve terminal or pin terminal in the axial direction, and at this time, the main body side pin terminal is relatively inserted in the battery side sleeve terminal to establish an electric connection between the terminals.
However, as mentioned above, in the conventional structures of terminals, since the sleeve terminal and pin terminal had been embedded in their respective portions by insert molding, positional accuracy can not necessarily be said to have been high, so that there has been a problem in which both the terminals lack in contact stability as the positioning of these terminals depends on the engagement of these terminals.
Namely, although the positional accuracy of one terminal with respect to a body (battery case, battery loading portion) can be increased to some extent, since there are at least two terminals (of late, three terminals in many cases) in the battery pack, positional accuracy between plural terminals tends to deteriorate.
In addition, in the conventional structures of terminals, it has been necessary for the battery pack to be loaded on the main body side by being slid in one direction with respect to the main body side apparatus until engagement between the sleeve terminal and the pin terminal is completed. To that extent, there have been difficult problems to aim at miniaturizing the main body side apparatus and/or the component-to-be loaded.
That is to say, the battery loading portion for the battery pack is longer than the battery pack in the longitudinal direction, so the length thereof needs to be at least equivalent to or longer than the amount of sliding necessary for the above-mentioned sleeve terminal and pin terminal to be engaged with each other. To this end, the battery loading portion of the main body side apparatus had to be provided with an additional space taking into consideration the amounts of sliding of both the terminals, which hampered the miniaturization of the main body side apparatus.
Further, since the above-mentioned main body side terminal (pin terminal) is exposed in the battery loading portion, the possibility is high that it gets deformed by some kind of collisions. On such occasions, there is a problem in which contact stability at the time of the both terminals being connected further deteriorates.
Particularly, when the battery pack is loaded on the battery loading portion in such a way that the orientation thereof is wrong or the battery pack is forcedly loaded on the battery loading portion by being tilted slantingly, unreasonable force (external force) is applied to the above-mentioned main body side terminal (pin terminal), with a result that there have been many troubles in which the above-mentioned main body side terminal are deformed.